New alcohol stove

[Troy Ammons]

I have been working on a least 20-30 different designs for probably 6 month now. Have gone through about a gallon of denatured alcohol and one burned knuckle.

Finally, finally, I have got one going that, will simmer or burn medium/hot or burn like a blow torch, and with the big sheild you can control the flame somewhat.

Its a 12oz heineken can stove, 3 holes in the rim facing in and 2 fill holes in the center.

I have been epoxying these stoves together with JB weld. Feel like they are safer like that.

This one I made with a pair of sissors and drilled the holes with a Kershaw knife blade tip. The holes are roughly 1/32" in diameter. A punched hole with a push pin works too.

So you have the stove body, a burner ring made from the top of one can, a pot support of 3/32 stainless tig rod that, a wind guard/regulator and a quarter (in the pocket). I am using a baby med applicator from CVS to fill. Works well.

Also the 24 oz heiniken can for a pot is part of the equation, because the dome shape of the bottom reflects a lot of heat back into the stove, IE in simmer mode without the can the stove will not stay lit for long. The distance from the can to the stove is critical too, IE height of the support.

1 Simmer mode, you set up the stove with no burner ring, fill it, prime the ring with 1/2-3/4 oz light the stove and go for it.

2 Medium/high boil mode you add the burner ring and do as above. With the burner ring it can be hard to light so I have been using a tiny cotton ball wick to get it started.

3 Afterburner super hot mode, do as above, but place the quarter on the middle 2 fill holes. Keeps the chamber pressurized.

I have only tested this thing at sea level, but in the cold or higher altitudes more pressure should help.

The large wind sheild can be moved in and out to regulate the burn in modes 1 and 2.

Using denatured alcohol….
Burn times and fill.
With pot insul it would boil faster, especially with 3 cups.

This is a medium boil mode 2 test with the wind sheild.
All rolling boils.

1C h20, 2tbsp dna total, 1/2tbsp in the ring 4 min boil, 6:15 burn.

1.5C, 2.5tbsp, 1/2, 7, 9
2C, 3tbsp, 1/2, 9:30, 11+-
2.5C, 4tbsp, 3/4, 11, 12:30
3C 4.5tbsp, 3/4, 12:30, 13

2.5 and 3 cups of h2o are not as efficient. Needs pot insul.

A few pics. I will post more later.

Cook kit less fuel bottle, 5.4 oz
Everything goes in the 24 oz can. The support wraps around the bottom of the can and the plastic bowl goes on top.

Cooking in medium mode 2 with the wind sheild. You can move this in and out to regulate the flame.

What the flame looks like in medium/hot mode. With the burner ring but no quarter.

Will post more pics later…

[Mark Hurd]

Troy,

Wow, nice stove. kind of a modified penny stove. I guess with inflation it's gone up to a quarter.:-). I like the low, medium, high and the tight flame pattern is great for the beer can pot.

Do you know the starting temp of the water in your test boils? Test boil times unfortunately don't mean anything without the starting temp.

Great job, thanks for the info and picks.

-Mark

[Troy Ammons]

Around 68dF but I will check later.

Yes I started off with a penny stove last year, did not really like the idea to always have a penny on the stove and me being somewhat lax probably would forget anyway.

That and the new Heineken cans have embossed numbers on them so a penny will not work unless you sand them down.

The original penny stove has a huge fill hole in the center which is not really required anyway.

After several stoves, I ditched the penny and started working on 1/16" single fill hole stoves. Some offset to the side to leave a alcohol puddle in the center some not. Some glued int he center to make the startup faster, some not. Out of 30-40 stoves at least never had one blow up though. All epoxied.

Right now I am working on a large emergency stove for home use made out of 2 24 oz Heineken cans. Same deal with the burner ring. I live in Hurricane country so an extra burner is always a good thing.

My folks live in the sticks, but have an electric stove so they can get hit too, so I intend to set them up with one. Testing it on top of a semi large folding Sterno pot holder. Sturdy setup.

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